Archives for 2008

I didn’t pay much attention to the broohaha surrounding the climaxing relationship between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and ex-supermodel / singer-songwriter Carla Bruni even though I was in the UK when France’s first couple swung by for an official visit in March. The controversy on the eve of the visit concerning the publication by Christies auction house of a nude photograph of Bruni taken during her career as a supermodel and the media’s special interest in Bruni’s wardrobe (Christian Dior — a diplomatic choice, being a French design house designed by John Galliano, a British designer) seemed laughable to me.

But having been introduced to Bruni’s music by — of all people — my mother, who’s a fan and played several of the singer-songwriter’s tracks for me while I was home visiting, I’ve now become completely obsessed with the Italian-born bombshell-maestro.

Bruni’s debut CD from 2002, Quelqu’un m’a dit, is one of the loveliest collections of musical musings I’ve heard in a long time. In many ways, Bruni follows directly in the footsteps of French singer-songwriters that have passed before her, including Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel in the sense that what she puts out into the world is deceptively simple: almost comical little tunes accompanied by little else than a strummed guitar.

But the surface texture of Bruni’s songs belies an inner depth and complexity. It’s the combination of Bruni’s sexy-philosophical lyrics and smoky-throated voice that haunt the listener in particular. My favorite track from the album is the title song. There are about three chords in the thing and Bruni’s voice cracks winningly every time she attempts to hit a note above a middle G. But the words, shrugging with a nonchalant sweetness in the face of one’s pathetic “little life,” are utterly infectious. You don’t know if she’s being jokey or sincere. Whatever she’s being, the music drips sensuality and I just can’t get enough.

Here’s a link to Bruni’s website. Both Quelqu’un m’a dit and her 2007 follow-up album, No Promises, are available in the U.S. via iTunes.

Being a passionate devotee of Slings & Arrows, the brilliantly written and incandescently acted Canadian TV series about the inner workings of a big regional theatre company, I was excited to stumble across an article in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle about a new video podcast series. The series concerns a group of young theatremakers as they journey towards putting on a black-box stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Double in San Francisco.

A collaboration between podcaster Bill Bowles, playwright Eric Henry Sanders, and a coterie of hipsterish 20-something Bay Area thespians, Meet The Play Group is described in the paper as “a refreshing new series that will appear to fans of The Office and Waiting for Guffman.”

Episodes of Meet The Play Group can be found at www.meettheplaygroup.com.

On Sunday, I attended an awards ceremony and party in honor of Dan Hoyle. A team of five local theatre critics (Rob Hurwitt of The San Francisco Chronicle, Karen D’Souza of The San Jose Mercury News, Chad Jones formerly of the Oakland Tribune, Rob Avila of The San Francisco Bay Guardian and yours truly) selected Hoyle as this year’s recipient of The Glickman Award for Best New Play. Every year, The Glickman Award (named in memory of play- and screenwriter Will Glickman) honors any new play to have received its world premiere in the Bay Area. Hoyle won the $4000 prize this time around for his stunning one-man show about Nigerian oil politics, Tings Dey Happen. The show is enjoying a revival in San Francisco at The Marsh Theatre following five acclaimed months Off-Broadway in New York.

For the review I wrote about Hoyle’s play last year in SF Weekly, click here.

Though I love being part of The Glickman Award panel — both for the opportunity the position provides to bestow recognition upon a very deserving playwright each year, and for the delicious disagreements that my colleagues and I invariably get into over dinner when we discuss potential candidates for the award every January — attending the prize-giving ceremony is always slightly traumatizing: They make the theatre critics give speeches.

No matter how much wine I drink, I always feel a bit nervous about throwing in my two-cents worth about why I love the winning show in public. Yesterday was no different. I sweated and shifted around in my high heels willing myself to say something intelligent. Unfortunately only burbling noises came forth. To make matters worse, I was the fifth speaker out of five, which meant that pretty much everything had been said already. So I made a joke based on something that Hoyle had said in an interview about Nigeria being like a party where the dog’s eaten the cake and all the lights are out and there’s a hole in the floor or somesuch nonsense and ploughed on through with my eyes glued to the rug, ending with some juvenile comment about being “awestruck” by the dramatist’s prowess. It was an unpleasant few minutes. But I got through it without throwing up, so for that I should at least be grateful.

The ridiculous thing is that my stage-fright is completely unfounded. No one comes to the Glickman Awards ceremony to listen to a bunch of critics rambling on. They come to rub shoulders with the winning playwright and his or her collaborators and drink good wine. Yet for some reason, knowing this doesn’t help. At least Hoyle quickly took the attention away from my muttering effort by performing a scene from his play. In a touching moment just before he started the scene, the performer had to hold back tears. His mother, who was sitting watching her son, actually shed a few. The catharsis was welcome after all the excitement.

The Theatre Communications Group (the body that oversees non-profit theatre in the U.S.) has launched a three-minute theatre video competition as part of the run-up to its 2008 National Conference to be held in Denver in June.

Contestants were asked to make a three-minute video about their theatre companies, including some thoughts about “their vision for theatre in the future.”

Browsers to the TCG website can view all eight submissions and then vote for their favorite. The winner(s) will receive the equivalent of two complimentary registrations to the TCG National Conference and the top videos will be screened at the conference.

I’m not sure what the rationale behind this competition is. I’m not sure the theatre community understands it either, otherwise TCG would have received more than just eight submissions. However, It’s interesting to see the range of styles and approaches even within such a small group of offerings:

7 Stages in Atlanta’s slick, sober effort looks and sounds like an infomercial on the theme of why theatre will change the planet. With the sound down, it could be a video for some environmental or education non-profit.

The Magic Theatre in San Francisco takes a completely opposing tack. Two hip young company members make jokey riffs about theatre while basking in the sunshine with a view of the sparkling Bay and Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The video looks like an MTV short with its rock music soundtrack and pithy soundbytes.

Actors Shakespeare Project of Boston’s video comes across as an earnest “artists at work”-type profile for public television. A narrator describes the company’s process and approach. Images depict rehearsals. The emphasis is definitely on showing “how a play is made.”

A more tongue-in-cheek and intriguing entry comes from The LARK Play Development Center in New York, which manages to combine insights about what the center does from such dramatists as Arthur Kopit and David Henry Hwang and a cheeky look into how the playwrights of the future need to forge ahead with their own creativity rather than rely on churning out plays according to a formula.

Other entries include:
Brava Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Imagination Stage, Bethesda
Kitchen Theatre Company and Ithaca
Youth Ensemble of Atlanta

What’s clear from the range of approaches to the subject is that the creators don’t quite know to whom they are pitching themselves. Creating a video about one’s theatre company for the sheer delight of it is a fun and I’m sure worthwhile exercise, but in what way does it really aid a company’s cause or the theatre’s cause in general? And if the videos are only meant to be seen by a bunch of theatre insiders at the TCG conference, then is there much point in the dudes from the Magic Theatre telling this audience to “get out and see a play!”?

Video can serve a variety of useful purposes in the theatre world for such things as recording rehearsals for the production team’s benefit and creating trailers for shows to use as tools to whet audiences’ appetites and sell tickets. In this case, though, the purpose seems less clear.

The brilliant San Francisco-baed comic book creator, Jon Adams, has been publishing tales about the quotidian lives of superheroes since 2000. Having garnered two Eisner nominations for his books (the comic book industry equivalent of the Oscars), a rocketing fan-base and appearances in publications like McSweeneys, Adams has now launched his Truth Serum comic strip as a weekly series online.

Adams’ superheroes aren’t like regular defenders of the universe. They may wear capes and masks, but you’re more likely to find them hanging about on street corners discussing girls or darning holes in their hose than dashing off to do heroic deeds. The down-to-earth humor of Adams’ superhero-next-door scenarios coupled with the delicate intricacy and precision of his drawings makes Truth Serum an utterly captivating read.

Adams now seems to be reaching a mainstream audience. Check out this article about Truth Serum in the Wall Street Journal.

A couple of years ago, while attending the NEA/Columbia Arts Journalism and Opera Institute in New York, a professor from NYU gave a lecture about how we listen to music. The lecture was mind-expanding though infuriating. The session basically consisted of the guy asking the same question — “how do you listen to music?” — over and over again. No one, including him, was able to answer the  question in a satisfactory way. “With our ears?” was about as close as anyone got, to which the professor replied, “yes, but how?”

My own pretentious attempt to respond to the question — something to do with hearing sound in terms of layers of melody and rhythm — was deservedly scoffed at and instantly dismissed.

I’ve given the question thought on and off since then, without making much progress. But while watching Thomas Riedelsheimer’s 2004 documentary about the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, Touch the Sound, a couple of days ago, I realized that maybe Glennie might be in a better position to answer the question than many other people.

As a profoundly deaf musician, Glennie often encounters the question, “how can you hear music if you’re deaf?” Glennie sees this line of thinking as an affront. In the documentary, she’s adamant that she hears music — with her entire body. What if we all hear music with our entire bodies and not just our ears? Perhaps ears are only part of the equation.

This thought lept out at me as I watched Touch the Sound, a film which in most other respects doesn’t provide any particularly interesting insights into the nature of sound or Glennie’s life and work. Riedelsheimer’s previous documentary — Rivers & Tides — about the envrironmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, was much more intriguing. The documentarian’s languorous, intuitive approach works much better I think for capturing the life of a visual artist than it does a musician. I found myself getting impatient with Touch the Sound. Romantic, endlessly lingering shots of Glennie thwacking a snare drum in the middle of a train station or burbling on a vibraphone in a disused warehouse reminded me of an 80s pop video. Rather than connecting me with her sound, the documentary estranged me from it.

Follow up:

Thanks to Jonathan Mayes of The Barbican Centre in London for forwarding a link to  a fascinating essay on Glennie’s website about how the percussionist hears music. From the essay:

A common and ill informed question from interviewers is ‘How can you be a musician when you can’t hear what you are doing?’ The answer is of course that I couldn’t be a musician if I were not able to hear. Another often asked question is ‘How do you hear what you are playing?’ The logical answer to this is; how does anyone hear?. An electrical signal is generated in the ear and various bits of other information from our other senses all get sent to the brain which then processes the data to create a sound picture. The various processes involved in hearing a sound are very complex but we all do it subconsciously so we group all these processes together and call it simply listening. The same is true for me. Some of the processes or original information may be different but to hear sound all I do is to listen. I have no more idea of how I hear than you do.

After four months, the rumors have finally stopped flying. The Board of Trustees of the Magic Theatre has finally appointed a new artistic director in the shape of Loretta Greco.

Greco takes over from Chris Smith, who is leaving the venerable 41-year-old San Francisco company this season after just five years as artistic director.

I am personally very sad to see Smith go. He has worked with indefatigable energy, generosity of spirit, and good humor to prop up the Magic’s slightly saggy reputation as a national landmark for new plays. It’s been tough going, to say the least.

On one hand, Smith has been instrumental in nurturing the careers of such up-and-coming playwrights as Betty Shamieh and Mat Smart, created a welcoming home for new work by established names like Rebecca Gilman and Josh Kornbluth, and pushed through the installation of the Magic Cafe — a great space to hear live music, check out production-inspired fine art, and discuss plays over a pre- or post-show drink. On the other hand, high-profile world premieres such as David Mamet’s Faust (which the author directed himself in 2003) and last fall’s staging of Bill Pullman’s Expedition 6 were artistic misfires, despite breaking box-office records. Commendable efforts to lure younger audiences to balance the theater’s maturing core clientele, such as offering discounts to under-30s, have so far done little to lower the audience’s median age. Meanwhile, recent season programs featuring a baffling assortment of mostly pedestrian new plays and turns by decaying celebrities like Joan Rivers and Marlo Thomas have undermined the company’s mission as a producer of “hot cool new plays.”

Still, the new appointment looks promising. I’ve admired several of Greco’s recent Bay Area productions. Her no-nonsense takes on David Harrower’s Blackbird and Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow at the American Conservatory Theatre have been slick and spunky. She also managed to make relatively compelling theatre out of Courtney Baron’s flaccid domestic drama Morbidity & Mortality at The Magic a couple of seasons ago. Greco comes to her new job with producing experience as the Producing Artistic Director of Women’s Project in NYC and as Associate Director and Staff Producer of McCarter Theatre, so it looks like she has some clue about the programming and management side of things.

The next few months should be interesting ones for Bay Area theatre. I’m also keen to see what Smith goes on to do next as a freelance gun for hire.

Did you hear the one about
the dyslexic agnostic with insomnia?
 He lays awake at night wondering if there
really is a dog.

According
to Yoga Journal, 54 percent of adults in the United States suffer from insomnia
at one time or another. Artists and writers seem particularly prone to this
problem. People who spend their days creating art or spinning ideas into prose
often have a great deal of trouble switching off at night. The other day, I
came across an unusual approach to the issue while doing some research on what
I thought was a completely unrelated bodily process – indigestion.

I don’t think there’s much of a future for me as a self-help columnist, but I can’t help sharing my thoughts on this topic. While
I have known for quite some time that eating too much of the wrong foods late
at night, such as caffeine or sugar, can keep a person up for hours as the body
attempts to process these substances, I always thought of indigestion as a
purely physical problem. Some foods keep the stomach churning and the esophagus
burning well into the night.

But
what I didn’t realize is how digestive afflictions can also be mental and
emotional.

Even if a person maintains a healthy diet and his physical digestion is in good order, he can keep himself up all night with his brain chewing endlessly over the previous day’s activities, cogitating about what lies ahead or attempting to make sense of how the world works. This is mental indigestion. The cogs whirr and it’s impossible to push the off button and sleep.

Emotional indigestion works in a similar way. Feeling upset about a painful memory or excited about a professional opportunity or personal relationship can throw us into maelstrom at night. Our pulses race and adrenalin courses through our bodies when we should be winding down for seven or eight hours of rest.

Unfortunately, the article I read online linking insomnia with indigestion (which I stupidly didn’t save and can’t seem to find again) didn’t go into how people suffering from sleepless nights might use this theory to help them get some rest. But I wonder if it might make sense to treat all three forms of indigestion – the physical, intellectual and emotional – in the same way?

Treating physical indigestion is relatively simple. I’m not talking about taking antacids to relieve the symptoms, but finding ways to prevent indigestion in the first place. These might include avoiding certain foods like wheat or dairy, eating more slowly, eating less and not eating for several hours before bed.

Perhaps the same thinking applies to emotional and intellectual indigestion. To avoid “chewing” thoughts and feelings over in the middle of the night, a person might try being less busy (“eating less,”) taking more time over their activities throughout the day (“eating more slowly”) and/or avoiding going to bed in an over-stimulated state by chilling out with a glass of wine and a trashy novel, having a bath or playing with the cat (“not eating for several hours before bed.”)

Depending on the seriousness of the insomnia, he or she might even consider more radical lifestyle changes, which would translate in physical terms as “changing one’s diet.” This could include anything from getting a different day job to deciding to talk through a problem with someone rather than keeping it to oneself.

Of course, there are many artists and writers out there who actually manage to put their sleeplessness to good use. They get up in the middle of the night and get on with their work rather than lying there in the dark picking their noses and wandering, like the dyslexic agnostic insomniac of the aforementioned joke, if there really is a dog. Yet tiredness is debilitating. No one, least of all those among us who have to balance making art with keeping a roof over their heads and caring for a family, can survive on little sleep.